“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

Atlanta (CNN) — Death came for Bruce Hampton as he celebrated his 70th birthday doing what he did best -- jamming on stage.

Hampton, known as the "granddaddy of the jam scene," collapsed on stage while rocking out Monday night during a concert held in his honor in Atlanta.

His agent, Micah Davidson of Midwood Entertainment, confirmed to CNN that the musician died. He gave no further details.

Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist who was on stage performing with Hampton, posted a statement Tuesday on his official Facebook page asking for privacy for Hampton's loved ones.

"After collapsing on stage surrounded by his friends, family, fans and the people he loved, Col. Bruce Hampton has passed away," the statement said. "The family is asking for respect and privacy at this difficult time."

The all-star event, held at Atlanta's Fox Theatre, was billed as "Hampton 70: A Celebration of Col. Bruce Hampton."

The stage was packed with performers -- including Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, Phish drummer Jon Fishman and Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell -- when the seasoned musician appeared to take a knee, then lay down as 14-year-old guitarist Brandon "Taz" Niederauer shredded chords on one of Hampton's favorite songs, "Turn on Your Love Light."

Some in the audience thought the guitarist's actions were a part of the show.

Those on stage continued to perform. They included actor Billy Bob Thornton, who cast Hampton in a small role in his critically acclaimed 1996 film "Sling Blade," Blues Traveler frontman John Popper, and Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Then people came out from the wings and carried Hampton off stage. The song abruptly ended

An ambulance arrived shortly thereafter and took Hampton away as dozens of fans watched quietly.

Born and raised Gustav Valentine Berglund III in New York City, Hampton was beloved in the music industry as a founding member of the rock blues quintet the Hampton Grease Band, which got its start in Atlanta.

While the band released only one album, "Music to Eat" in 1971, it developed a bit of a cult following, and Hampton went on earn a reputation as one of the best jam musicians in the industry.

He was the subject of a 2012 documentary, "Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Colonel Bruce Hampton."

Hampton he gave an interview in 2015 to the site Live For Live Music in preparation for his reunion tour with the Aquarium Rescue Unit.

He spoke of his extensive career, which stretched from playing in bands in the 1970s to doing voice-over work in commercials for brands such as Popeyes fried chicken and Motel 6.

"I was a lasso instructor and a lariat importer, and they were all weird, fleeting jobs," he told the site. "I've been fortunate to do music all my life, and I've done enough acting to make it fun."

Fans, including a few famous ones, grieved Hampton on Tuesday.

"So so sad to say goodbye to the great & wondrous Col. Bruce Hampton," Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes and Chris Robinson Brotherhood told CNN in a statement. "The music world lost one of a kind last night, a true original, a man who heard the light! God speed Col. Bruce, we miss you."

Added longtime friend Oliver Wood of The Wood Brothers, "Just by example, he taught us to challenge our ideas about music and what it's for. Bruce was equal parts prankster and mystic. He was serious about music, but also taught us not to take ourselves too seriously. He was a one of a kind human. What an honor to be with him on his final night."

Vocalist and saxophonist Karl Denson called Hampton "the poet of some undefined movement that all the artists came to for wisdom and clarity."

"Once you connected with him, you felt inspired not to be jive, to know what was important and take chances," Denson said in a statement. "Most of all, he made us supremely happy."

Leavell, the keyboardist who tours with The Rolling Stones and was part of the Allman Brothers Band in the 1970s, said Hampton died doing what he loved.

"A poetic exit," said. "And I'm sure if he had written the script himself, that would've been the last page of the last chapter."

Oh wow I didn't know some of these people were dead ~ but when your number is up, it's up, and so why are we so surprised when it happens? Because it forces us to face the fact that we're all gonna die.

My Polish friend called a pedestrian crossing, a Presbyterian crossing, for years. In Australia, we refer to the hard shoulder of a road as the hard edges, or according to Barbara; our Polish friend, the hard eggs darggiling.

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla, at his home in Sagamihara, Japan, in 2014. To perfect the monster’s notoriously destructive gait, he spent hours at the zoo, studying how elephants and bears walked. Credit Junji Kurokawa/Associated Press

HONG KONG — Haruo Nakajima, the Japanese actor who played the movie monster Godzilla in a dozen films and whose booming steps in a 200-pound rubber suit sent the denizens of Tokyo running into cinematic history, died on Monday. He was 88.

Mr. Nakajima died of pneumonia, according to his daughter, Sonoe Nakajima.

In 1954, Mr. Nakajima, then a 25-year-old stunt actor who had previously appeared in just four movies, was cast in what are perhaps Japan’s two most famous films of that era. In Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, “Seven Samurai,” Mr. Nakajima had only a bit part. But in “Godzilla,” he played the titular character: a gigantic, irradiated lizard whose mutated form and destructive power symbolized the potency of nuclear weapons.

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Mr. Nakajima would eventually don the heavy rubber monster costume 12 times from 1954 to 1972, turning Japan’s postwar nuclear anxieties into an international phenomenon.

In an era before computer-generated effects, the international success of Godzilla kicked off Japan’s golden age of tokusatsu, or “special-filming” movies, in which rubber-costumed actors typically destroyed scale-model sets.

“We had to improvise, and make it all look real on screen,” Mr. Nakajima told The New York Times in a 2013 interview.

At the end of a day of shooting, Mr. Nakajima would later recall, he typically sweat so much inside the hot, heavy suit and beneath the soundstage’s bright lights that he was able to wring enough sweat from his undershirt to fill half a bucket.

To perfect the monster’s notoriously destructive gait, Mr. Nakajima spent hours at the zoo, studying how elephants and bears walked. In interviews, the actor said that he had wanted to make sure the monster was believable and to enable viewers to connect with it on an emotional level.

Mr. Nakajima was born in Yamagata, Japan, on New Year’s Day in 1929. He was 16 when Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II and appeared in his first credited role in “Sword for Hire” in 1952, when he was 23.

As a contract actor for the Japanese studio Toho, Mr. Nakajima starred in dozens of other monster movies, including as King Kong in the 1967 film version.

He retired from acting in 1973 and is reported to have briefly taken a job at the bowling alley on the Toho studio lot. Beginning in the 1990s, he made frequent appearances at conventions for comic book and movie fans.

“Godzilla,” the first film in the franchise, was released nine years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was a not-so-thinly-veiled fable about the dangers of nuclear weapons.

“One might regard him as a symbol of Japanese hate for the destruction that came out of nowhere and descended upon Hiroshima one pleasant August morn,” The Times wrote in a 1956 review of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” the English-dubbed version of the film released in North America. “But we assure you that the quality of the picture and the childishness of the whole idea do not indicate such a calculation. Godzilla was simply meant to scare people.”

Mr. Nakajima was the first iteration of Godzilla to scare people, but not the last. Toho produced 27 more Godzilla films after Mr. Nakajima hung up his rubber suit in 1972. Since then, Hollywood has produced three “Godzilla” movies. The next in the franchise will star Ken Watanabe and is scheduled for release in 2019.

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef